Council, mayor candidates debate at forum

SANDPOINT — Local council and mayoral candidates in contested races got a chance to match their pitch to area voters at a Monday candidate forum.

Monday’s forum, hosted by the Bonner County Daily Bee, featured Dover and Sandpoint city council candidates, and Sandpoint mayoral as well as local school board candidates.

While only one of the three candidates for Dover City Council was able to attend the forum, Keith Congleton, who is running for one of two open seats, answered questions about housing availability, uniting the old and new sides of Dover, and defining “progress for the city.” Both Dan Parkin and Steven Haynes said they are traveling and expressed their regrets that they were unable to attend.

Congleton, a resident of Dover for over 29 years, said he is running for two reasons: representation of all residents and growth management.

“Growth can’t be stopped, but it needs to be managed,” Congleton said.

After a career in banking, finance and construction, he said he has skills tailored to the role he is hoping to fill.

In response to a question about his approach to housing availability, he said he doesn’t see a great deal of opportunity for affordable housing developments in the city, however he would like to see those improvements happen if they were possible.

For Dover, Congleton said progress could come in the form of increased recreational opportunities in addition to residential growth that is already happening. Dover recently received an application from a company that wants to donate 100 acres of land for trails, which Congleton noted as a valuable gift to the city and the surrounding community.

With history of disunity in Dover, it’s time to collaborate, Congleton said.

“We need to all get together to find out what our common goals are, rather than our differences, and focus on that.”

During the Sandpoint City Council forum, strong themes of historical preservation, community involvement, building height restrictions and street improvements emerged from comments given by the six candidates running for three open seats.

Those candidates include Amelia Boyd, Pam Duquette, Deb Ruehle, Kyle Schreiber, Grant Simmons and Elle Susnis.

They answered questions about the Downtown Waterfront Design Competition, how each defines “progress” for the city, and how to improve citizen involvement.

Some candidates touched on scheduled Travers Park renovations which have polarized the community. A portion of the audience had protested outside the library with the goal of encouraging voters to support their cause.

Amelia Boyd, a board member on the Planning and Zoning Commission, said she will prioritize being available to citizens and infrastructure improvements.

Boyd said  the competition has a lot of great features and a lot of “not-so-great” features. She supports ideas like stormwater treatment with native plants and a new boat launch.

To encourage involvement and community input, Boyd said she intends to establish officer hours, like students would have with professors at a university. She also hopes to publish newsletters about important issues in the city.

For Boyd, progress in Sandpoint looks like increased community involvement.

“Nobody has gone to our planning and zoning meetings to give us input on the comp plan,” she said. “Progress is being involved.”

For Pam Duquette, a 40-year resident of Bonner County, progress is “moving forward with the community behind what we want for progress.”

She said that the city should move ahead at a pace everyone can follow.

“We need infrastructure, like people have said,” Duquette said. “We need our roads taken care of before we do any fancy designs. I would like to see progress in walking and biking downtown — less traffic, less big trucks.”

Duquette also said she would like to see more emails sent out by the city.

“I’ve received two emails about leaf pickup, but never gotten an email about anything else,” she said. “November 29, on the agenda, there is a comp plan meeting. One time, one day, that's not going to do it for everybody, we need to offer more of those.”

Concerning the waterfront design competition, Duquette wants more community involvement. She is concerned for City Beach and wants to make sure it maintains its character.

“There are some good ideas, but it kind of stepped on a plan we already had. We were going to move the boat launch, now people don’t like where it is.”

Incumbent Deb Ruehle has been serving the city for 12 years. She referenced her institutional knowledge as a benefit to the council, and also brought up concerns about building height codes and how she would like to lower them.

The competition, in Ruehle’s view, is a starting place that will actually manage a progress pace that is slower and more digestible for everyone.

“When all three of these designs came forward, I was horrified.” Ruehle said. “I think the one that we chose is still very flamboyant. I think we need to stick to the basics of the infrastructure. But there are some wonderful details in the depths of this.”

She also said she hopes to see citizen committees emerge, better outreach from the city, and more citizens signing up for city emails.

Ruehle said citizens need to be involved on the front end of issues. From her perspective, she can put in the effort to encourage engagement, but there has to be a willingness to get involved from the other side.

“I’ve passed multiple budgets with not a single person from the public there,” she said.

In her closing statement, Ruehle presented some of the accomplishments that the council has made in recent years, including moving forward with the sewage treatment plant and budget adjustments for road and sidewalk projects. She also mentioned protecting the watershed as a main priority for her.

With a degree in finance and a career in marketing, Kyle Schreiber said he has a suitable skill set for a council member.

Throughout his marketing career, Schreiber said he emphasized identifying problems and learning how to solve them. He intends to take the same approach should he be elected.

Schreiber also brought up building height limits and how they contribute to historic preservation — one of his priorities.

From his perspective, the competition is delaying important historic preservation goals.

Schreiber said progress looks like addressing problems. With roads below standard, the wastewater treatment plant due for updates, he sees improvements that could have been made earlier in the city’s timeline.

To encourage public involvement in city decisions, Schreiber supports bringing citizen committees back.

“They are written into our code, and we are breaking our own laws by not having them,” he said. “I think that a lot of our current problems would have been addressed if we had citizen committees overseeing a lot of the changes that have been happening in the last couple of years, and are going to be happening in the next couple of years.”

As elected officials, Schreiber said it’s the council’s responsibility to reach out to the public, and not wait for the community to come to them.

“I'm running for Sandpoint, because I absolutely love this town,” candidate Grant Simmons said in his opening statement. “It has been my dream maker. This town has given me everything. It’s given me my family, my three kids ... It's allowed me to build a multimillion dollar business here and I want to safeguard that for the next guy.”

Simmons said the competition provides great ideas that will help the community best utilize opportunities for year-round recreational use — something of which he is a big fan.

“I like the idea of experts coming in and providing ideas,” he said. “ And that's largely what's happened.”

Progress, for Simmons, is deliberate growth management. He explained this as taking the business at hand, and making sure the community knows about it.

Simmons also recommended instituting public forums devoted to community input on alternating weeks with council meetings. Other ideas to encourage public involvement he suggested included city notice doorknob hangers and neighborhood committees.

Forty-eight-year Bonner County resident Elle Susnis is shaping her campaign around historic preservation, starting with the downtown core.

In her opening statement, she highlighted building height codes and her intent to reform them to better preserve the downtown’s historic character.

“I'm a fan of the waterfront competition,” she said. “If we want to update the program, okay, we can save our money and get that in several years. But what does mama need right now? She needs historic preservation. And if you look in that plan at the third phase, there's a lot of information in there that shows you exactly what will happen with those different heights, information, and design guidelines.”

She wants the community to look at the plan with an open mind and understand that the city doesn’t expect to implement it all at once.

“Progress looks to me like a community that is working together to make these decisions,” Susnis said. “We may not have had that very much in the last couple years.”

All of the candidates highlighted the need for more community involvement, with most claiming that the current administration is not actively pursuing efforts to engage the public as much as they should.

During the portion of the forum set aside for candidates running for Sandpoint mayor, topics ranged from the city administrator’s position, what skills are important for a mayor to have, and how they would involve the community.

Jeremy Grimm said he is running for mayor because he is concerned about where the city is headed and he wants to ensure the best future for his children. 

“Frankly, I think the city's off the tracks,” he said in his opening statement. “I think the city needs to focus on the law, focus on the residents and focus on changing our economy from a tourist-based economy.”

Grimm addressed the city administrator position during his opening statement, but elaborated when asked the first question.

“The one thing I promise you is I will work … to get rid of the city administrator position,” he said.

Grimm said the position that began as a trial has proven counter productive in the past eight years. He believes the city should return to a department head style of government.

“What you see today is a summary report from the city administrator going to the council with a recommended action, and unfortunately, there's not a lot of in-depth discussion about those actions.”

In Grimm’s opinion, the most important experience for a mayor to have is understanding how the city works. That includes finance, communication, public involvement and infrastructure.

Kate McAlister, a 30-year resident, said she was asked by many of the businesses and organizations she works with to run for mayor. She said her goals are to increase community engagement and plans to bring back citizen committees if elected.

She agreed with Grimm that knowing how a city works is important for a mayor to have in their toolbox, but added “being a convener.” That means handling conflict, bringing people together to talk about conflict, and listening to what they have to say.

“I plan on having community conversations topic specific on Saturday mornings or whenever or whenever the citizens are most likely to get together,” McAlister said. “I don't think that a Thursday morning at 10 a.m. is a good time to get everybody together because I don't think most people can get off of work to do that.”

In regards to the position of city administrator, McAlister said she would make adjustments to the balance of roles in the city should she become mayor, but that ultimately, since the position is an appointed one, its fate is left up to the council. She said the position is a great “operations manager position,” but she would be intentional about bringing information directly from the community to the council and prioritize her direct involvement.

“If the citizens do not want the position, then I recommend that we make the mayor full-time because right now, mayor is part-time, and it's $25,000 a year,” she said.

If the community wants a mayor who is going to keep those operations going, and ensure that determined plans are carried out, they would need to make the mayor’s position full-time, she said.

“A good mayor is the heartbeat of the city,” Frytz Mor said when describing the best experience for a mayor to have. “A mayor has to be able to deal with a multitude of personalities. Can you actually hold everybody in the same standard, regardless of what side they're on … can you actually engage with the community in a meaningful way, and accept where everyone is at and entertain their ideas?”

Mor believes the city administrator position is unnecessary, and like Grimm, supports giving departments more autonomy.

“What we're seeing is an unprecedented urgency to push things through, through a bloated bureaucracy,” Mor said. “They have almost tripled the budget for the administration in the last two years if you look at the budget.”

Mor also emphasized his love for the town, and Sandpoint’s need for leaders who are “not embroiled in conflicts of interest,” as he put it.

“What I am looking to do is be a mayor of the people,” he said. “Somebody who's actually going to represent you and your interests. That's my only conflict of interest.”

All mayoral candidates mentioned being available to citizens and encouraging in-depth community involvement.